Nearly everyone must be aware that various kinds of people wear protective headgear, examples being bicycle and motorcycle riders, construction workers, firemen, mine workers, players of so-called contact sports, race drivers, soldiers, and members of other groups, identifiable by their type of clothing or markings attached thereto.
A disadvantage of much headgear marking is lack of permanence, inasmuch as the wearers' own activities often tend to fade, degrade, or remove the identifying markings, partially if not completely.
Attempts have been made from time to time to ameliorate--if not to eliminate entirely--such degradation of headgear marking, and to encourage improved design, manufacture, and marking of the headgear. Examples identified in U.S. patents include multilayered headgear by Cleveland, U.S. Pat. No. 3,437,631; Rodell, U.S. Pat. No. 3,445,680; Gesselin, U.S. Pat. No. 4,466,138; Tung, U.S. Pat. No. 3,885,246; Johnson, U.S. Pat. No. 3,946,441; Luna U.S. Pat. No. 4,008,949; Mitchell, U.S. Pat. No. 4,599,752; and Gentes, U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,082. Johnson, Rodell, and Mitchell disclose two-piece separable headgear; Gesselin teaches an inseparable two-piece; Cleveland teaches pigmentation of headgear compositions; Tung, Luna, and Gentes illustrate layering of reflective materials in headgear.
Despite improvements contributed by those inventors or others, headgear tends to carry no marking, or only relatively uninformative all-over marking, or informative marking susceptible to damage/loss.